George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw refused his own first name. He insisted on being called Bernard Shaw, dropping the George after 1876. He wrote more than sixty plays across a career that ran from the 1880s until his death, and the word Shavian entered the English language to describe both his ideas and the way he expressed them. He is regularly rated among British dramatists as second only to Shakespeare.
Yet the man who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925 also praised Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler, and once wrote that there are many people in the world who ought to be liquidated. He promoted eugenics, opposed vaccination, and refused all state honours. How does a writer hold a country's affection while denouncing both sides of a world war as equally guilty? And what made a Dublin boy who hated all four of his schools into the leading dramatist of his generation? The answers run through music, poverty, a borrowed reading room, and a saint.
Shaw was born at 3 Upper Synge Street in Portobello, a lower-middle-class part of Dublin, the youngest child and only son of George Carr Shaw and Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw, known as Bessie. His two elder siblings were Lucinda Frances and Elinor Agnes. The family belonged to the dominant Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, though George Carr Shaw was among its less successful members, an ineffectual alcoholic pensioned off from a civil service sinecure in the early 1850s.
Bessie married George in 1852, in the view of Shaw's biographer Michael Holroyd to escape a tyrannical great-aunt. She came to despise her often drunken husband, with whom she shared what their son later called a life of shabby-genteel poverty. The young Shaw recalled that his mother's indifference and lack of affection hurt him deeply.
Music was the household's saving grace, and its source was George John Lee, a flamboyant figure in Dublin's musical circles. Lee was a conductor and singing teacher; Bessie had a fine mezzo-soprano voice trained in his unorthodox method. Shaw retained a lifelong obsession that Lee might have been his biological father, a question on which Shavian scholars reach no consensus. In 1862 Lee and the Shaws agreed to share a house at No. 1 Hatch Street, plus a country cottage on Dalkey Hill overlooking Killiney Bay.
Between 1865 and 1871 Shaw attended four schools, all of which he hated. Schools and schoolmasters, he later wrote, were prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing their parents. In October 1871 he left school to become a junior clerk in a Dublin firm of land agents, rising quickly to head cashier. Then in June 1873 Lee left Dublin for London and never returned, and a fortnight later Bessie followed him with her two daughters.
Early in 1876 Shaw learned that his sister Agnes was dying of tuberculosis, and in March he travelled to England for her funeral. He never again lived in Ireland and did not visit it for twenty-nine years. His mother let him live free of charge in her South Kensington house, but he still needed an income, and Lee found him work ghost-writing a musical column printed under Lee's name in a satirical weekly, The Hornet.
For self-education Shaw secured a reader's pass for the British Museum Reading Room, the forerunner of the British Library, and spent most weekdays there reading and writing. His first attempt at drama, begun in 1878, was an unfinished blank-verse satire on a religious theme. His first completed novel, Immaturity, written in 1879, was too grim for publishers and did not appear until the 1930s.
A brief stint at the newly formed Edison Telephone Company in 1879 to 1880 brought rapid promotion, but when Edison merged with the rival Bell Telephone Company, Shaw chose not to stay. For the next four years his writing earned a negligible income, and his mother subsidised him. In 1881, partly for economy and increasingly as a matter of principle, he became a vegetarian. That same year an attack of smallpox left a facial scar that he later hid behind a beard.
His novels kept failing to sell. The Irrational Knot of 1880 and Love Among the Artists of 1881 found no publisher, and were later serialised in the socialist magazine Our Corner. At the Zetetical Society in 1880, a group devoted to the search for truth in all matters affecting the interests of the human race, he met Sidney Webb, a junior civil servant educating himself just as Shaw was. The two recognised something in each other at once. You knew everything that I didn't know and I knew everything you didn't know, Shaw later reflected, with brains enough to learn from one another.
On the 5th of September 1882 Shaw attended a meeting at the Memorial Hall in Farringdon, addressed by the political economist Henry George. He read George's book Progress and Poverty, which awakened his interest in economics, then turned to the Social Democratic Federation, where he discovered Karl Marx and spent much of 1883 reading Das Kapital. He found the federation's founder, H. M. Hyndman, autocratic and ill-tempered, and declined to join, preferring to work with his intellectual equals.
A tract titled Why Are The Many Poor? drew Shaw to the recently formed Fabian Society, whose meeting he attended on the 16th of May 1884. He became a member that September and before the year's end had written the society's first manifesto, published as Fabian Tract No. 2. He recruited Webb and the orator Annie Besant, and joined the executive committee in January 1885.
Attending the British Economic Association from 1885 to 1889 moved Shaw away from Marxism toward gradualism, an experience Holroyd called the closest Shaw had ever come to a university education. After a Trafalgar Square rally was violently broken up on the 13th of November 1887, remembered as Bloody Sunday, he became convinced of the folly of challenging police power. He embraced Webb's principle of permeation, the idea that socialism could best advance by infiltrating people and ideas into existing parties.
In 1889 the society's profile rose with Fabian Essays in Socialism, which Shaw edited and to which he contributed two essays. His essay Transition argued that the necessity for cautious and gradual change must be obvious to everyone. In 1890 his Tract No. 13, What Socialism Is, assured readers that socialism can be brought about in a perfectly constitutional manner by democratic institutions.
The mid-1880s marked a turning point. Shaw had been celibate until his twenty-ninth birthday, when his shyness was overcome by Jane Patterson, a widow some years his senior; their affair continued, not always smoothly, for eight years. In the same span his two final novels appeared, Cashel Byron's Profession and An Unsocial Socialist, neither a commercial success, and he began earning his living as a critic.
Through the influence of the critic William Archer, Shaw was engaged to write book and music criticism for London papers, and when Archer resigned as art critic of The World in 1886, he secured the post for Shaw. The two figures Shaw most admired in the art world were William Morris and John Ruskin, whose emphasis on morality matched his own rejection of art for art's sake and his insistence that all great art must be didactic.
Music was where Shaw made his name as a critic. He became musical critic of The Star in February 1889, writing under the pen-name Corno di Bassetto, then moved to The World in May 1890, writing a weekly column as G.B.S. for more than four years. In the 2016 Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Robert Anderson wrote that Shaw's collected writings on music stand alone in their mastery of English and compulsive readability. Those collected criticisms run to more than 2,700 pages, covering the British musical scene from 1876 to 1950.
He was fiercely partisan, promoting Wagner and decrying Brahms and the British composers Stanford and Parry whom he saw as Brahmsian. He demanded music criticism a non-specialist could read, avoiding what he called Mesopotamian words like the dominant of D major. From 1895 to 1898 he was theatre critic for The Saturday Review, edited by his friend Frank Harris, contributing more than 150 articles and assessing more than 212 productions. He championed Ibsen when many found him outrageous, and rated Oscar Wilde above all contemporaries as our only thorough playwright.
Shaw had been writing plays for years before his first public success. Widowers' Houses, built from an aborted 1884 collaboration with Archer, was staged twice in London in December 1892. The Philanderer waited until 1905 for a stage production, and Mrs Warren's Profession, written in 1893, reached the stage nine years later.
Arms and the Man in 1894 was the play that first brought him money. A mock-Ruritanian comedy satirising love, military honour, and class, it drew press complaints of mediocrity and overlength, but the public crowded extra matinees, and it earned him 341 pounds in royalties in its first year. That sum let him give up his salaried post as a music critic. In the cast was Florence Farr, with whom Shaw had a relationship between 1890 and 1894 that Jenny Patterson much resented.
In 1898, as a result of overwork, Shaw's health broke down. He was nursed by Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a rich Anglo-Irish woman he had met through the Webbs, who had proposed marriage the year before. He married her on the 1st of June 1898 in the register office in Covent Garden; both were aged forty-one. The marriage, generally believed never consummated, was in the biographer St John Ervine's view entirely felicitous. In 1906 the couple found a country home in Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire, renamed it Shaw's Corner, and lived there for the rest of their lives.
At the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, the company of J. E. Vedrenne and Harley Granville-Barker staged fourteen of Shaw's plays over five years from 1904. The first, John Bull's Other Island, was seen by Edward VII, who laughed so much he broke his chair. Man and Superman succeeded in 1905, followed by Major Barbara, contrasting arms manufacturers and the Salvation Army, The Doctor's Dilemma on professional ethics, and Caesar and Cleopatra, his counterblast to Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.
Fanny's First Play, a comedy about suffragettes, had the longest initial run of any Shaw play at 622 performances. Then came Pygmalion, written in 1912 and staged in Vienna before its British opening in April 1914, starring Sir Herbert Tree and Mrs Patrick Campbell as a professor of phonetics and a cockney flower-girl. The English press, Shaw complained, customarily declared each new play of his dull, blasphemous, and financially unsuccessful, which was why Vienna and Berlin demanded his work first.
Heartbreak House, written in 1916 to 1917, was Shaw's first major postwar work, and critics on both sides of the Atlantic found it about an hour too long. His largest-scale work, Back to Methuselah, a cycle of five plays staged in 1922, depicted evolution from the Garden of Eden to the year 31,920 AD. At sixty-seven, having poured himself into this Metabiological Pentateuch, he expected to write no more plays.
Then Joan of Arc was proclaimed a saint by Pope Benedict XV in 1920. Shaw had long found Joan interesting, his view veering between half-witted genius and someone of exceptional sanity. He wrote Saint Joan in the middle months of 1923, and it was premiered on Broadway that December and enthusiastically received. Even the Nobel committee could no longer ignore Shaw after Saint Joan, in the words of his biographer Stanley Weintraub. The 1925 literature prize praised work marked by both idealism and humanity. Shaw accepted the award but rejected the money, saying his readers and audiences provided more than sufficient for his needs.
His politics darkened across the same years. In 1922 he welcomed Mussolini as the right kind of tyrant. In 1931 he joined a party led by Nancy Astor to the Soviet Union, met Stalin, and described him as a Georgian gentleman with no malice in him. When the Nazi Party came to power in January 1933 he called Hitler a very remarkable man, a very able man, and professed himself the only writer in England scrupulously polite and just to Hitler. In a New York Times report of the 10th of December 1933 he praised Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin together as men trying to get something done.
Though Shaw despised Hollywood, he entrusted the film rights of Pygmalion to the unknown Gabriel Pascal, who produced it at Pinewood Studios in 1938. Shaw provided the screenplay and won an Academy Award, which he called an insult coming from such a source. He became the first person to hold both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar. In a 1993 study, Anthony Holden noted Pygmalion was soon spoken of as having lifted movie-making from illiteracy to literacy.
Throughout the Second World War, Shaw's earlier plays were revived in the West End while he himself wrote no new one, turning instead to prolific journalism. In 1944 nine of his plays were staged in London, including Arms and the Man with Ralph Richardson, Laurence Olivier, and Sybil Thorndike. That same year his final political treatise, Everybody's Political What's What, sold 85,000 copies by the end of the year, though Holroyd judged it a rambling narrative that repeats itself.
Charlotte's health failed first. Increasingly incapacitated by Paget's disease of bone, she died in September 1943 after the couple had moved back to Whitehall Court for easier medical help. Shaw himself developed pernicious anaemia, treated with injections of concentrated animal liver, a breach of his vegetarian creed that distressed him and drew condemnation from militant vegetarians.
In 1946, the year of his ninetieth birthday, Shaw accepted the freedom of Dublin and became the first honorary freeman of the borough of St Pancras in London. When the British government asked informally whether he would accept the Order of Merit, he declined, believing an author's merit could only be settled by the posthumous verdict of history. He had taken dual British-Irish nationality in 1934 while remaining a British subject all his life.
Shaw kept writing into his nineties. His last works included Buoyant Billions in 1947, the puppet play Shakes versus Shav in 1949 in which Shakespeare and Shaw trade insults, and Why She Would Not in 1950, written in one week shortly before his ninety-fourth birthday. He died at ninety-four of renal failure brought on by injuries from a fall while pruning a tree at Shaw's Corner. He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on the 6th of November 1950, and his ashes, mixed with Charlotte's, were scattered around the statue of Saint Joan in their garden.
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Common questions
Who was George Bernard Shaw?
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist, and political activist who lived from the 26th of July 1856 to the 2nd of November 1950. He wrote more than sixty plays and became the leading dramatist of his generation. At his own insistence he was known simply as Bernard Shaw.
What plays did George Bernard Shaw write?
George Bernard Shaw wrote more than sixty plays, including Man and Superman in 1902, Pygmalion in 1912, and Saint Joan in 1923. His first financial success was Arms and the Man in 1894. Other major works include Major Barbara, The Doctor's Dilemma, and Caesar and Cleopatra.
When did George Bernard Shaw win the Nobel Prize?
George Bernard Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1925. The citation praised his work as marked by both idealism and humanity. He accepted the award but rejected the monetary prize that went with it, saying his readers and audiences provided more than enough money for his needs.
Why did George Bernard Shaw win an Academy Award?
George Bernard Shaw won an Academy Award for the screenplay of the 1938 film version of Pygmalion, produced by Gabriel Pascal at Pinewood Studios. He called the award an insult coming from such a source. He became the first person to hold both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar.
What were George Bernard Shaw's political views?
George Bernard Shaw was a socialist and the most prominent pamphleteer of the gradualist Fabian Society. He promoted eugenics and alphabet reform, and opposed vaccination and organised religion. In his later years he expressed admiration for Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler.
How did George Bernard Shaw die?
George Bernard Shaw died at the age of ninety-four of renal failure caused by injuries from a fall while pruning a tree at his home, Shaw's Corner in Ayot St Lawrence. He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on the 6th of November 1950. His ashes were mixed with those of his wife Charlotte and scattered in their garden.
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159 references cited across the entry
- 1JournalGeorge Bernard Shaw toward Nazism?Anna Rita Gabellone — 2023
- 3JournalLamarck and Darwin in the History of ScienceCharles Coulston Gillispie — Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society — December 1958
- 4BookThe Broadview Anthology of Drama, Volume 2: The Nineteenth and Twentieth CenturiesCraig S. Walker et al. — Broadview Press — 9 July 2003
- 7BookBernard Shaw and the AesthetesElsie Bonita Adams — Ohio State University Press — 1971
- 8BookThe Rise of the Labour Party 1880–1945Paul Adelman — Routledge — 1996
- 9BookThe Black and TansRichard Bennett — Pen & Sword Books — 2010
- 10BookWhat is Theatre?Eric Bentley — Atheneum — 1968
- 11BookThe Making of British SocialismMark Bevir — Princeton University Press — 2011
- 12BookDictionary to the Plays and Novels of Bernard ShawCharlie Lewis Broad et al. — Haskell House — 1929
- 13BookHistorical Dictionary of British CinemaAlan Burton et al. — Scarecrow Press — 2013
- 14BookBernard ShawPat Carr — Ungar — 1976
- 15BookBernard Shaw's Irish OutlookDavid Clare — Palgrave Macmillan — 2016
- 16BookGrowing up into RevolutionMargaret Cole — Longmans, Green — 1949
- 17BookThe Story of Fabian SocialismMargaret Cole — Heinemann — 1961
- 18BookBernard Shaw: "Mrs Warren's Profession"L. W. Conolly — Broadview Press — 2005
- 19BookOld Men ForgetDuff Cooper — Rupert Hart-Davis — 1953
- 20BookPresent Indicative – Autobiography to 1931Noël Coward — Methuen — 2004
- 21Shaw's British InheritorsFred D. Crawford — The Pennsylvania State University Press — 1993
- 22BookSybil ThorndikeJonathan Croall — Haus — 2008
- 23BookBernard Shaw: A Psychological StudyDaniel Dervin — Bucknell University Press — 1975
- 24BookShaw and the Last Hundred YearsBernard F. Dukore — The Pennsylvania State University Press — 1992
- 25BookBernard Shaw: His Life, Work and FriendsSt John Ervine — Constable — 1956
- 26BookThe Concise Oxford Companion to English LiteratureMargaret Drabble et al. — Oxford University Press — 2007
- 27BookThe Politics and Plays of Bernard ShawJudith Evans — McFarland — 2003
- 28BookGeorge Bernard Shaw: The Critical HeritageT.F. Evans — Routledge — 1976
- 29BookThe SatiristLeonard Feinberg — Transaction Publishers — 2006
- 30BookWho's Who in the TheatreSir Isaac Pitman and Sons — 1967
- 31BookSocialism and Superior Brains: The Political Thought of George Bernard ShawGareth Griffith — Routledge — 1993
- 32BookBehind the Oscar: The Secret History of the Academy AwardsAnthony Holden — Simon & Schuster — 1993
- 33BookBernard Shaw, Volume 1: 1856–1898: The Search for LoveMichael Holroyd — Penguin — 1990
- 34BookBernard Shaw, Volume 2: 1898–1918: The Pursuit of PowerMichael Holroyd — Chatto & Windus — 1989
- 35BookBernard Shaw, Volume 3: 1918–1950: The Lure of FantasyMichael Holroyd — Penguin — 1993
- 38BookEdwardian Shaw: The Writer and his AgeLeon Hugo — Macmillan — 1999
- 39BookThe Cambridge Companion to George Bernard ShawChristopher Innes — Cambridge University Press — 1998
- 40BookTwentieth-century Theatre and DramaJürgen Kamm — WVT — 1999
- 41BookG.B. Shaw: A Collection of Critical EssaysR.J. Kaufmann — Prentice Hall — 1965
- 42BookThe Story of the Abbey Theatre: From its Origins in 1899 to the PresentPeter Kavanagh — Devin-Adair — 1950
- 43BookIn the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human HeredityDaniel J. Kevles — Harvard University Press — 1995
- 44BookShaw, Books, and LibrariesDan Laurence — University of Texas — 1976
- 45BookFabian Socialism and English Politics, 1884–1918A. M. McBriar — Cambridge University Press — 1962
- 46BookMichael Collins: A LifeJames Mackay — Mainstream Publications — 1997
- 47BookThe Order of MeritStanley Martin — Taurus — 2007
- 48BookGeorge Bernard ShawJohn F. Matthews — Columbia University Press — 1969
- 49BookShaw and the Charlatan GeniusJohn O'Donovan — Dolman Press and Oxford University Press — 1965
- 50BookThe Disciple and his Devil: Gabriel Pascal and Bernard ShawValerie Pascal — Michael Joseph — 1971
- 51BookWisdom and Innocence: A Life of G. K. ChestertonJoseph Pearce — Hodder & Stoughton — 1997
- 52BookBernard ShawHesketh Pearson — Four Square Books — 1964
- 53BookThe Origins of the Labour PartyHenry Pelling — Oxford University Press — 1965
- 54BookBernard Shaw: The Ascent of the SupermanSally Peters — Yale University Press — 1996
- 55BookBernard Shaw and the FrenchMichel Pharand — University Press of Florida — 2000
- 56BookAnimal Sensibility and Inclusive Justice in the Age of Bernard ShawRod Preece — UBC Press — 2011
- 57BookElgarW.H. Reed — Dent — 1939
- 58BookThe D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in Gilbert and Sullivan Operas: A Record of Productions, 1875–1961Cyril Rollins — Michael Joseph — 1962
- 59BookShaw of Dublin: The Formative YearsBenjamin Rosset — Pennsylvania State University Press — 1964
- 60BookEugenics and Politics in Britain, 1900–1914Geoffrey Russell Searle — Noordhoff International — 1976
- 61BookGeorge LansburyJohn Shepherd — Oxford University Press — 2002
- 62BookThe New Statesman: Portrait of a Political Weekly 1913–1931Adrian Smith — Routledge — 2013
- 63BookThe Story of Shaw's Saint JoanBrian Tyson — McGill-Queen's Press — 1982
- 64BookThe Cart and the Trumpet: The Plays of George Bernard ShawMaurice Valency — Oxford University Press — 1973
- 65BookThe London Stage, 1910–1919: A Calendar of Plays and PlayersJ.P. Wearing — Scarecrow Press — 1982
- 66BookThe Unexpected ShawStanley Weintraub — Ungar — 1982
- 67BookBernard Shaw and Totalitarianism: Longing for UtopiaMatthew Yde — Palgrave Macmillan — 2013
- 68BookElgar O.M.Percy Young — White Lion — 1973
- 69BookA Manifesto (Fabian Tract No. 2)Bernard Shaw — Grant Richards — 1884
- 70BookFabian Essays in SocialismThe Fabian Society — 1889
- 71BookWhat Socialism Is (Fabian Tract No. 13)Bernard Shaw — Grant Richards — 1890
- 72BookFabianism and the EmpireBernard Shaw — Grant Richards — 1900
- 73NewsCommon Sense About the WarBernard Shaw — The New York Times — December 1914
- 74NewsIrish Nonsense About IrelandG. Bernard Shaw — 9 April 1916
- 75BookThe League of Nations Fabian Tract No. 226Bernard Shaw — The Fabian Society — 1929
- 76BookThe Complete Plays of Bernard ShawBernard Shaw — Odhams — 1934
- 77BookEverybody's Political What's WhatBernard Shaw — Constable — 1944
- 78BookSixteen Self SketchesBernard Shaw — Constable — 1949
- 79BookCollected Letters, Volume 1: 1874–1897Bernard Shaw — Reinhardt — 1965
- 80BookShaw: An Autobiography, 1856–1898Bernard Shaw — Reinhardt — 1969
- 81BookShaw's Music: The Complete Music Criticism of Bernard Shaw, Volume 1 (1876–1890)Bernard Shaw — The Bodley Head — 1981
- 82BookShaw's Music: The Complete Music Criticism of Bernard Shaw, Volume 2 (1890–1893)Bernard Shaw — The Bodley Head — 1981
- 83BookShaw's Music: The Complete Music Criticism of Bernard Shaw, Volume 3 (1893–1950)Bernard Shaw — The Bodley Head — 1981
- 84BookShaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, Volume 18Bernard Shaw — Pennsylvania State University Press — 1998
- 85On the Rocks (ebook)Bernard Shaw — Project Gutenberg Australia — 2003
- 86JournalCaptain Brant and Captain Brassbound: The Origin of an O'Neill CharacterDoris M. Alexander — April 1959
- 87JournalMr Shaw's ProfessionMax Beerbohm — January 1962
- 88JournalMother, Sister, and Wife in The MillionairessMarianne Bosch — 1984
- 89JournalBook Review: The Crime of ImprisonmentPhilip S. Broughton — July 1946
- 90JournalJournals to StellaFred D. Crawford — September 1975
- 91JournalBernard Shaw's Theory of Literary ArtFred D. Crawford — Spring 1982
- 92JournalThe Shaw DiariesFred D. Crawford — 1988
- 93JournalWays Pleasant and Unpleasant: Collected Letters FourFred D. Crawford — 1990
- 94JournalFrom Symposium: What May Lie Ahead for Shaw After the First Hundred Years?Bernard Dukore — 1994
- 95JournalBernard Shaw and the Irish Literary TraditionPeter Gahan — 2010
- 96JournalBernard Shaw and Adolf HitlerH. M. Geduld — January 1961
- 97JournalThe Plays of Bernard ShawErnest Hoffsten — 2 April 1904
- 98JournalThe Banning of George Bernard Shaw's 'The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God' and the Decline of the Irish Academy of LettersBrad Kent — Autumn 2008
- 99JournalThe Blanco Posnet ControversyJanuary 1955
- 100Journal'That Awful Country': Shaw in AmericaDan Laurence — 1985
- 101JournalHow Shaw Destroyed his Irish BiographerDaniel J. Leary — November 1971
- 102MagazineAll Honor to his Genius; But his Message is Irrelevant to our Problems TodayTime Inc. — 12 August 1946
- 103JournalShaw in Contemporary Irish Studies: Passé or Contemptible?Victor Merriman — 2010
- 104JournalBernard Shaw the PlaywrightL. N. Morgan — Spring 1951
- 105JournalA Plea for Bernard ShawArthur Nothorcot — January 1964
- 106JournalBernard Shaw as Shakespeare CriticRobert B. Pierce — 2011
- 107MagazineReligion: Creative Revolutionary4 December 1950
- 108JournalThe Irrational Knot: Shaw and The Uses of IbsenJohn Rodenbeck — May 1969
- 109Journal'Getting Married' New Dramaturgy in ComedyWilliam Sharp — May 1959
- 110JournalThe Religion of George Bernard Shaw: When is an Atheist?Gary Sloan — Autumn 2004
- 111JournalThe Intelligent Woman's Guide: Some Contemporary OpinionsEric Wallis — 1991
- 112JournalA Hand at Shaw's CurtainGerald Weales
- 113JournalShaw as ScreenwriterGerald Weales — May 1969
- 114JournalShaw's Musician: Edward ElgarStanley Weintraub — 2002
- 115JournalGBS and the DespotsStanley Weintraub — 22 August 2011
- 116JournalThe Critic as Analyst: Bernard Shaw as ExampleE.J. West — October 1952
- 117JournalShaw and the Charlatan GeniusSir Jack Westrup — January 1966
- 118NewsAt the Play: Mr Shaw's Major Barbara3 December 1905
- 119NewsAvenue Theatre29 April 1894
- 120NewsAt the Play: Mr Shaw In DespairSt John Ervine — 23 October 1921
- 121NewsAt the Play: Back To MethuselahSt John Ervine — 14 October 1923
- 122NewsHeartbreak House19 October 1921
- 123NewsHeartbreak House in New York12 November 1920
- 124NewsAbuse of Shaw's literary legacyMichael Holroyd — 7 April 1992
- 125NewsBernard Shaw and his lethally absurd doctor's dilemmaMichael Holroyd — 13 July 2012
- 126NewsThe Shavian MomentDaniel Janes — 20 July 2012
- 127NewsGeorge Bernard Shaw photographs uncover man behind mythMaev Kennedy — 5 July 2011
- 128NewsTiming is everything: how plays find their momentsMark Lawson — 11 July 2012
- 129NewsMr Bernard Shaw's £367,000 Estate24 March 1951
- 130NewsMr Shaw's Play15 October 1923
- 131NewsMr Shaw's Saint Joan29 December 1923
- 132NewsMrs Warren's Profession29 September 1925
- 133NewsMrs Pat Campbell Here10 October 1914
- 134NewsWas George Bernard Shaw a Monster?J. Kelly Nestruck — 1 July 2011
- 135NewsNews Report10 December 1933
- 136NewsNew Theatre27 March 1924
- 137NewsSuperman? A look back in anguishJohn Osborne — 23 June 1977
- 138NewsShaw's secret fair lady revealed at lastRichard Owen — 14 June 2004
- 139NewsBack To Methuselah at BirminghamCrompton Rhodes — 16 October 1923
- 140NewsShaw's Pygmalion Has Come to Town13 October 1914
- 141NewsSocial Conditions in Russia: Recent Visitor's Tribute2 March 1933
- 142NewsThe Avenue Theatre: Arms and the Man22 April 1894
- 143NewsThe Doctor's Dilemma: Mr Bernard Shaw's New Play21 November 1906
- 144NewsThe Modest Shaw Again23 November 1913
- 145NewsThe Drama1 April 1895
- 146NewsThings Theatrical19 May 1894
- 147NewsBernard Shaw: ObituaryPhilip Tomlinson — 10 November 1950
- 148NewsToo True to Be Good – Mr G. B. Shaw's New Play – America Sees it First2 March 1932
- 149NewsVedrenne-Barker Plays: Famous Partnership Dissolved8 March 1908
- 150NewsWaftings from the Wings1 May 1894
- 151Shaw, BernardRobert Anderson — Grove Music Online
- 152The Fabian Society in Late Victorian BritainAndrzej Diniejko — The Victorian Web — September 2013
- 153JournalShaw, George Bernard (1856–1950)St John Ervine — 1959
- 154Fabian Tracts: 1884–1901LSE Digital Library
- 155Shaw, George BernardNicholas Grene — 2003
- 156BookLove Among the ArtistsBernard Shaw — H.S. Stone and Company
- 157The Nobel Prize in Literature 1925Nobel Media AB — 2014
- 158A Chronology of Works By and About Bernard ShawMichael Pharand — Shaw Society — 2015
- 159Shaw, George Bernard: 1856–1950Verein SwissEduc
- 160Shaw, George BernardStanley Weintraub — 3 October 2013
- 161Shaw Societies: Once and NowStanley Weintraub — The Shaw Society